In the US and other countries, longer life spans, the aging of the population, and the increasing cost of medical care especially in the last years of life, has produced much interest in new approaches to improving the quality of late-life years and reducing costs of late-life care. Presently, there are several portable devices that allow an individual to call for help. In using such a device, the individual must recognize that he/she is in a situation in which help is liked to be needed or such a situation is imminent. Further, the individual must not only recognize that he/she is in such a situation or such a situation is imminent, the individual must also be capable of using the device to call for help and use the device to call for help. There are other portable devices that are capable of receiving radio signals from multiple medical monitors with each radio signal providing data relating to a particular physiological parameter of the individual and transmitting the data to a centralized location. Also known are other devices (not necessarily portable devices) that monitor rooms for unusual movement, that attach to a patient to evaluate motion of a body, that locate an elderly person who may have wandered, or perform other specific functions.